A US space firm landed its spacecraft on the Moon on Sunday in a major breakthrough in private space exploration. Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost Mission 1 landed at 3:34 AM US Eastern Time (0834 GMT) close to Mons Latreille, a volcanic feature on the northeastern near side of the Moon.
“Y’all stuck the landing, we’re on the Moon,” an engineer at mission control in Austin, Texas, announced as the team erupted in cheers.
A Stable Landing Unlike Its Predecessor
This is only the second private lunar landing and the first to land standing up. CEO Jason Kim would later confirm that the spacecraft was “stable and upright,” unlike the last private mission in February 2024, which landed sideways.
NASA leaders also marked the accomplishment. “We’re on the Moon!” declared Nicky Fox, associate administrator for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate.
Mission Facts and Scientific Goals
Dubbed “Ghost Riders in the Sky,” the mission is one of the NASA-private industry partnership efforts to slash costs and benefit the Artemis program, which will send astronauts back to the Moon.
The gold-colored lander, roughly the length of a hippopotamus, was deployed on Jan. 15 on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. It had a Japanese firm’s lander as its fellow passenger that will try to land in May.
Blue Ghost is equipped with 10 scientific instruments, such as a lunar soil analyzer, a radiation-hardened computer, and an experiment on whether global satellite navigation systems can be used to explore the Moon.
The lander will be active for a full lunar day (14 Earth days) and will record high-definition images of a total eclipse on March 14, when Earth passes in front of the Sun from the Moon’s horizon. It will also record a lunar sunset on March 16, which will provide scientists with information on how dust suspends over the surface under solar control—a phenomenon discovered by Apollo astronaut Eugene Cernan.
Future Private Missions to the Moon
Another Texas company, Intuitive Machines, is also next in line with its IM-2 mission equipped with the Athena lander scheduled for launch on March 6.
Earlier, in February 2024, Intuitive Machines made history when it became the first private entity to land a spacecraft on the Moon. Nonetheless, the lander tilted while landing, constraining its solar power to be generated and truncating its mission.
To build on previous issues, Athena features a taller, narrower profile than Blue Ghost, reaching about as high as an adult giraffe. It was launched February 28 on a SpaceX rocket, flying directly toward Mons Mouton, the southermost lunar landing site yet attempted.
Athena carries three rovers, a drill to look for ice, and a hopping drone that is set to map out rough lunar terrain.
NASA’s Commercial Lunar Program and Future of Moon Missions
To land on the Moon is to face particular challenges, given the absence of an atmosphere to render parachutes useful, meaning thruster burns need to be performed with accuracy for controlled landing. Prior to Intuitive Machines’ initial success, only five national space agencies had managed it: the Soviet Union, the United States, China, India, and Japan.
NASA is currently engaged in an effort to increase private missions to the moon with greater frequency via its $2.6 billion Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program.
These missions come at a time of high stakes for NASA, as rumors that the agency is considering scaling back or terminating its Artemis program to make room for more exploration of Mars—another high priority for Elon Musk and SpaceX—are swirling.
With private enterprises taking major leaps, the future of lunar exploration is changing at a fast pace, with commercial missions playing an important part in expanding human presence outside Earth.